Hide The Mess

losing my religion

"The familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand." Joseph Campbell

There are so many things swimming around in my head that I'm having trouble holding onto them all. This book I'm reading keeps making me cry. Not tears of sorrow really, or even tears of pain, but the kind of tears that come when something or someone speaks a truth I've known is my own but could never say out loud. Saying those things out loud would be considered nothing short of blasphemy. For quite some time now I've known the religion I grew up in doesn't fit. I tried for a very long time to make that brand of spirituality fit inside of me - but it didn't. It isn't mine. I've known this. But now I know it differently. I know it from a larger place inside. And the last pieces of a spirituality that wasn't even mine to begin with are falling away. Or more accurately, the spirituality that has always been there, that is mine, is taking up more and more room – pushing out what doesn't belong in order to fill me up.

Can I Get A Witness?

There is this weird service at my office where a couple of chaplains come around a couple of times a week and just make nice with the employees. They are available to talk or what have you, and they aren't usually invasive, and ... I guess it's nice. Weird. But nice. I've worked here over a year and have managed to keep the interaction to surface stuff. But yesterday I got asked the question most Evangelical Christians are programmed to ask on day one of their indoctrination ... "When you close your eyes tonight, do you know for sure that if you died you would go to heaven?". Or some derivative. We used the simpler and less wordy version "If you die tonight do you know where you'll go?" when warming up for some savin’ of souls. Because in theory no one wants to go to hell, right? And you have directions to the ONLY WAY to avoid hell ... so this question is key. Ugh. Vomit. This kind of shit makes me roll my eyes so hard that I actually catch a glimpse of my BRAIN. And my eyes will probably get stuck that way and my Mom will dance a victory dance because she's been telling me my whole life that if I keep rolling my eyes like that THEY WILL GET STUCK THAT WAY. Anyway. So I got witnessed to. At work. And he was sneaky in getting me to open the door to the conversation since I don't think they're supposed to just randomly walk around witnessing because ... inappropriate! So he was looking at my pictures and asking who people were and then asked about my Dad and what he did, and then my Step Dad, and ... yeah ... yeah ... my mom married two ministers ... ha ha ha ... and then he asked where I go to church and I'm going to assume my reply "No where, I've done my time in church." is what prompted him to enter Salvation Mode. Thing is ... hello? Ministers Daughter. I'm covered dude. Trust me. Growing up I asked Jesus into my heart so many times he stopped taking my calls. I was convinced I'd done it wrong, or that my heart wasn't sincere enough, or maybe the fact that I accidently thought the word 'sex' got in the way and Jesus gave me the hand and said "no, I'm not livin' in THERE." and so at the end of every service, during the alter call, I would secretly pray the prayer. Every. Week. Because I wasn't so sure it took the first FIVE THOUSAND TIMES. Damn. See what happens when you tell a very sensitive little girl that she's a sinner and going to hell? Goddamn it. It's pissing me off just thinking about it.